Every year, Israel exports millions of pounds worth of dates to the world, which many people unknowingly buy and use to break their fasts. These dates are often grown in illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank and the Jordan Valley, on land that has been stolen from Palestinians. By buying these dates, we are helping Israel to continue it’s illegal occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. With your hard work, dedication and support the #CheckTheLabel campaign has grown significantly over the last 8 years. The campaign has gone to the heart of the communities in cities and towns across the UK to ensure no one buys these dates. However, despite our efforts not everyone is aware, which is why we need your help this Ramadan. With only three weeks to go before Ramadan we want you to help us launch the #CheckTheLabel – Boycott Israeli Dates campaign.

In 1948, around 80% of Palestinians were forced out of their homes during the creation of Israel. That event is known as the Nakba, or “the Catastrophe.” So where did they go? And how many Palestinians are there around the world now?

15-year-old Leanne Mohamad has won international praise for her impassioned speech on Palestine as part of the national ‘Speak Out’ competition. However, things took a downward turn when the Jewish Chronicle published an article falsely claiming that she was disqualified from the final. Leanne has faced unacceptable online harassment and vilification as a result.

The JC ARTICLE published on 29 May stated that Leanne was “unanimously” taken out of the competition after her “anti-Israel” speech, further stating that the speech was “anti-Israel.” Thus, according to the JC, anyone who speaks out against Israel’s violations of international and human rights law is automatically deemed anti-Israeli. The decision to ‘disqualify ‘ Leanne supposedly followed complaints by blogger Edgar Davidson to the Speakers Trust. Davidson is the same man who labels racist, violent campaigners from the EDL as ‘Patriots’ and undermines the right of the Palestinians to exist as a people. However, this is not mentioned in the article.

Julie Holness, CEO of the Speakers Trust has been directly quoted in the article saying that Leanne breached two fundamental rules of the competition. These included providing a positive and uplifting message, as well as never to inflame or offend the audience, specifically referring to propaganda being ruled out.

However, in a statement issues by Speakers Trust on 31 May they said, “In terms of progression in the competition – all 37 talented Regional Final champions were entered into the semi-final on Saturday 21st May. Only 15 of these can reach the Grand Final stage. A panel of judges selected the top 15 speeches without any external influence or input and prior to any of the issues that emerged this weekend.” Speakers Trust emphasised that the decision was made without any external influence and prior to the complaint from Davidson, but the JC claims otherwise.

Friends of Al-Aqsa spoke to a representative from the Speakers Trust earlier this afternoon asking them for clarification on the issue. Speakers Trust confirmed that they never gave a statement to the JC. However, they did not comment on the selective quotes that were used by their CEO and the conversation with Davidson. FoA feels that Speakers Trust must be clearer about their position. Failure to do so will stir up more ambiguity about the matter.

Furthermore, the JC must issue an apology for its false reporting and use of inflammatory language in calling Leanne’s winning speech “anti-Israel.” The speech was empowering, moving and instilled a sense of urgency to this pressing issue many Palestinian children face.

In another blow to the Israeli campaign to criminalize Palestine solidarity activism, the Irish government has affirmed that the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement represents a “legitimate” means of protest “intended to pressure Israel into ending the occupation.”

In the Irish parliament on Thursday, foreign minister Charles Flanagan stated that “while the government does not itself support such a policy,” the BDS movement holds a “legitimate political viewpoint” and that the government does “not agree with attempts to demonize those who advocate this policy.”

Second blow in a week

This is the second major setback Israel has suffered this week to its campaign to delegitimize and criminalize the global movement within the European Union and other Western states.

Ireland is the third EU government to make such a statement in recent months.

Earlier this week, Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenderssaid that “statements or meetings concerning BDS are protected by freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, as enshrined in the Dutch constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.”

In March, the Swedish foreign ministry stated that BDS “is a civil society movement. Governments should not interfere in civil society organization views.”

At Israel’s urging, governments in the US, UK, France, Canada and elsewhere are attempting to introduce anti-democratic legislation, and taking other repressive measures to undermine the BDS movement.

Israel has also said that it is using its intelligence services to spy on BDS activists around the world.

Gilad Erdan, the Israeli cabinet minister charged with combating the global movement, described BDS activists as threats, saying they must “pay the price” for their campaign work.

“With the Netherlands and Ireland joining Sweden in defending the right to advocate and campaign for Palestinian rights under international law through BDS, Israel’s attempt to get BDS outlawed in Europe and to bully its supporters into silence have been dealt a serious blow,” said Riya Hassan, Europe coordinator for the Palestinian BDS National Committee.

“Israel’s attacks on our movement appear to be backfiring as they have led to European governments and some of the world’s most famous human rights organizations and political organizations across Europe and the world speaking out in defense of our right to advocate BDS,” Hassan added.

“Across European civil society, there is a fast spreading recognition of the BDS movement as a legitimate form of nonviolent, grassroots human rights advocacy for the UN-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people,” Hassan said.

Ireland “deeply concerned” about Omar Barghouti

The Irish foreign minister’s comments came in the context of a parliamentary debate concerning Palestinian human rights defender and co-founder of the BDS movement Omar Barghouti, who is facing politically motivated repression by Israel.

Israel is refusing to renew the travel document of Barghouti, a Palestinian born in the diaspora married to a Palestinian citizen of Israel, preventing him from pursuing his campaign work internationally. He has been told that his permanent residency status is being reviewed.

Responding to a question from the Anti-Austerity Alliance member of parliament Mick Barry, the foreign minister said that “the EU delegation in Israel has asked for clarification of [Barghouti’s] position and we will follow all developments in the case.”

Flanagan added that the government was “deeply concerned about wider [Israeli] attempts to pressure [nongovernmental organizations] and human rights defenders through legislation and other means to hinder their important work. We have raised this both at EU level and directly with the Israeli authorities.”

The minister also promised that the Irish government “will monitor the ongoing developments in this case in conjunction with the EU delegation and as part of our broader engagement in support of the role of human rights defenders and the protection of civil society space.”

Flagging friend of Israel

The Irish government’s position will perhaps be especially galling for Israeli officials as Flanagan is considered to be very friendly towards Israel, having formerly been a member of the small Friends of Israel grouping in the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament.

Before becoming foreign minister in July 2014, as chair of the governing right-wing Fine Gael party, Flanagan was a vocal opponent of the BDS movement.

In 2013 he publicly criticized the Teachers’ Union of Ireland for its adoption of a motion to support the academic boycott of Israel.

In 2012, Flanagan lambasted Trocaire, the overseas development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland, when it began a campaign asking the Irish government to ban products from Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law, calling the move a “very partisan political campaign that is beyond their remit.”

In a 2013 interview with pro-Israel columnist Carol Hunt, Flanagan made clear his belief that “Israel has been demonized by an Irish media slavishly dancing to the Palestinian drumbeat for decades.”

“Israel has a far better and more progressive record on human rights than any of its neighbors,” Flanagan claimed. “The truth must be told.”

But now it would appear that even for certain officials and governments with sympathies towards Israel, including Flanagan, the latest attacks on the civil society BDS campaign are proving either too anti-democratic or too embarrassing to defend.

Notably, in the Irish general election earlier this year, Israel lost three of its most vocal parliamentary friends; disgraced former minister for justice and defense Alan Shatter of Fine Gael and Joanna Tuffy of the Labour Party lost their seats, while former education minister Ruairi Quinn, also of Labour, did not contest the election.

Meanwhile, a pre-election campaign initiated by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign saw around 40 candidates who were ultimately elected to Ireland’s 158-seat parliament sign pledges opposing the Irish arms trade with Israel and supporting the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement due to Israel’s human rights violations.

Israeli funding booted from literary festival

This wasn’t the only bad news for Israel’s propaganda, or hasbara, efforts in Ireland this week.

On Tuesday, the Listowel Writers’ Week Festival announced it would be refusing funding from the Israeli embassy in Ireland to bring an Israeli writer to the festival.

The issue came to light on Sunday when members of Ireland’s artistic community began highlighting on social media that the festival’s brochure listed an event in which the Israeli embassy was explicitly thanked for its support.

After having been contacted by concerned individuals, including many artists, the organizers announced that the fesitval would honor its commitment to host the Israeli writer Savyon Liebrecht, but was rejecting the Israeli embassy funding.

This move is in line with cultural boycott guidelines issued by PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which call for a boycott of Israeli institutions, not individuals.

“As a Palestinian woman who is exiled from her homeland, I thank the festival for refusing to take Israeli state funding for this event,” IPSC chair Fatin Al Tamimi said, “This decision is courageous, principled and absolutely the right thing to do. This is a small, but certainly significant, positive gesture that will be appreciated by the Palestinian people struggling for freedom, justice and equality, whether under Israel’s apartheid regime or living in exile.”

On Sunday, an Israeli court denied a petition to ban the ‘Jerusalem Day’ march from taking place in the Muslim Quarter in the occupied East Jerusalem. Hundreds of right-wing Israelis entered the Al-Aqsa Sanctuary, while thousands gathered around the Western Wall.

Settlers were protected by heavily armed Israeli police creating inevitable hostility on the ground. Israelis marched down the Old City with Israeli flags chanting nationalist slogans causing violence and disruption for worshippers, shop owners and locals.

‘Jerusalem Day’ is an Israeli national holiday that celebrates the ‘reunification’ of Jerusalem and the beginning of Israel’s control over the Old City in the aftermath of the Six-Day War in June 1967. Many Israelis proudly celebrate this day despite condemnation by the international community on Israel’s illegal occupation in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel’s annexation over the area is illegal under international law.

Last week 1,500 activists attended a conference at the UN General Assembly in New York that aimed at stopping the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement.

The conference highlighted strategies to name and shame those who support the BDS movement as a way of smearing individuals who support the cause. This is not a new idea Israel has been advocating this tactic for years. However, despite Israel’s efforts it has had little impact on the growing momentum of BDS. The aim was to speak young by targeting college students to counter the growing support for BDS and to crush the Palestinian-led BDS movement by rebranding BDS as a hate group.

“For those who are still convinced that BDS isn’t working they simply need to look at the time, energy and money being spent to counter the BDS movement. We know that BDS is working because of the number of cases of individuals, institutions and companies taking action against Israel’s illegal occupation. The growing concern from pro-Israeli activist about the BDS movement shows that it is working. We urge everyone to join our campaigns and continue to support this vital human rights cause.” – FOA

BDS is growing because people are becoming increasingly aware of Israel’s human rights abuses and it’s continual violations against international law. Politically conscious citizens and organisations are taking a stand against Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Not only are people boycotting to stop Israel’s illegal occupation but because it is the Palestinians themselves who have called for a boycott.

A 12-year-old Palestinian girl, imprisoned by Israel after she confessed to planning a stabbing attack on Israelis in a West Bank settlement, returned home on Sunday when she was freed early after an appeal.

Dima al-Wawi was greeted by about 80 relatives at her family’s house in Halhoul, a village near Hebron, a West Bank city that has been a focal point of violence. Relatives decorated the house with balloons and posters. Banners by the Islamic militant group Hamas and the Fatah party of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas adorned the walls.

According to court documents provided by the military, al-Wawi approached the West Bank settlement of Carmei Tsur on 9 February with a knife hidden under a shirt. A security guard ordered her to halt and a resident instructed her to lie on the ground and told her to give up the knife, which she did.

An amateur video clip shown on Israeli TV showed the resident asking the girl, who was wearing her school uniform, whether she had come to kill Jews, and she said yes. She later pleaded guilty to attempted manslaughter in a plea bargain and was sentenced to four and a half months in prison.

Al-Wawi is believed to be the youngest female Palestinian sent to prison.

Her case put Israel’s military justice system under the spotlight. Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 six-day war and Palestinian residents they are subject to a system of military law that can sentence suspects as young as 12 to prison. By contrast, Israeli settlers in the West Bank, as well as Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, are subject to Israeli civil law, which does not allow anyone under 14 to go to prison.

The incident came amid seven months of violence in which Palestinians killed 28 Israelis and two Americans in stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks in Israel and the West Bank. At least 190 Palestinians have died from Israeli fire.

]]>https://nakba.co.uk/2016/06/11/palestinian-girl-12-freed-from-israeli-jail/feed/0waheedmiahWATCH: Israeli soldiers kick knife towards body of man ‘executed’ in Hebronhttps://nakba.co.uk/2016/06/11/watch-israeli-soldiers-kick-knife-towards-body-of-man-executed-in-hebron/
https://nakba.co.uk/2016/06/11/watch-israeli-soldiers-kick-knife-towards-body-of-man-executed-in-hebron/#respondSat, 11 Jun 2016 23:09:11 +0000http://nakba.co.uk/?p=1584A video has emerged that seems to show a knife being kicked in the direction of an alleged Palestinian attacker who is seen lying on the ground.

The new footage, obtained by Israel’s Channel Two, may show what happened shortly before an Israeli soldier shot the Palestinian in the head in March, despite him being wounded and lying on the ground. It is not clear who moves the knife in the video but voices are heard calling for the knife to be kicked closer to the body.

The March killing of 21-year-old Abed al-Fatah al-Sharif caused widespread shock and condemnation from rights groups and liberal Israelis, some of whom have dubbed the killing an execution.

Elor Azarya, the Israeli solider who shot the injured man in the head, has since been charged with manslaughter and inappropriate military conduct but has not been charged with murder. Segments of the Israeli public have also rallied to his side, with thousands of people protesting in support of Azarya, a dual Israeli-French national.

The controversy erupted after a Palestinian activist with Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem captured footage showing Sharif lying motionless on the ground and then an Israeli soldier approaching and shooting him in the head at close range.

An army investigation into the incident has revealed that Sharif was shot and left to bleed out on the street for eight minutes before the fatal shot.

]]>https://nakba.co.uk/2016/06/11/watch-israeli-soldiers-kick-knife-towards-body-of-man-executed-in-hebron/feed/0waheedmiahTel Aviv shooting results in collective punishment for Palestinianshttps://nakba.co.uk/2016/06/11/tel-aviv-shooting-results-in-collective-punishment-for-palestinians/
https://nakba.co.uk/2016/06/11/tel-aviv-shooting-results-in-collective-punishment-for-palestinians/#respondSat, 11 Jun 2016 23:06:43 +0000http://nakba.co.uk/?p=1582Four Israelis were killed during an attack in Sarona Market in Tel Aviv on Wednesday night. Israeli police say that attackers were two Palestinians from the same family from the town of Yatta, south of the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. Israel has already taken steps to collectively punish all of their relatives by withholding over 200 travel permits for extended family members.

Surprisingly, the attackers were arrested rather than extra-judicially assassinated as has become Israeli policy. Since October 2015, over 200 Palestinians have been shot and killed by Israeli soldiers, settlers and even civilians. In the same period, 33 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians. Of those killed, many were accused of attempting to attack Israeli soldiers despite no evidence being provided. Many teenagers have been shot and killed at checkpoints, which has been documented by human rights groups. This is the cycle of violence which has persisted as a direct result of the occupation and Israel’s oppressive and violent policies.

Three Palestinian teenagers have been shot and killed while attempting to attack Israeli security forces in two separate incidents in the West Bank, the Israeli military and police said.

In the first incident on Sunday, two Palestinians had been throwing rocks at vehicles near the West Bank city of Jenin and had opened fire at Israeli forces with a rifle when they arrived at the scene, the military said. The soldiers fired back and killed them. No soldiers were wounded in the exchange. The Palestinian health ministry identified the Palestinians as Nihad Waked and Fouad Waked, both 15.

Later, at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Jerusalem, a Palestinian with a knife ran at Israeli border police and was shot dead, Israeli police said. No Israeli officers were wounded. The Palestinian health ministry identified the Palestinian as 17-year-old Naim Safi.

Peace Now, an Israeli watchdog group, said yesterday Israel had begun building 1,800 new settlement homes in the West Bank in 2015.

A delegation from the European Parliament was blocked by the Israeli authorities from entering Gaza on Tuesday, the EU said in a statement. The lawmakers, who are part of the working group of the European Parliament Delegation for relations with Palestine, arrived in Jerusalem on Monday and was due to visit Gaza to assess the destruction caused in the 2014 conflict and the reconstruction efforts funded by the European Union.

According to the statement, a copy of which was sent to MEMO’s reporter in Gaza, no justification was given to explain the refusal.

Delegation Chair Irish MEP Martina Anderson stated: “The systematic denial by Israel of access to Gaza to European Parliament delegations is unacceptable. The European Parliament has not been able to access Gaza since 2011.”

Anderson added: “This raises questions: what does the Israeli government aim to hide? We shall not give up on the Gazan people.”

“The sight of Israeli soldiers breaking the arms and legs of Arabs is reprehensible. The idea of Israel closing down towns and sealing them off is unacceptable,” the then mayor of Burlington, Vermont, said to a gaggle of reporters.

Sanders was referring to the television images that shocked the world in those early months of the first intifada, of Israeli soldiers methodically breaking the limbs of Palestinian youths on the orders of then defense minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Sanders went so far as to suggest that the US use the “clout” that its billions in military aid to Israel and its neighbors gave it to force a change in behavior, “or else you begin to cut off arms.”

This was a bold appeal for any elected official in the United States both then and now.

“You have a situation where Hamas is sending missiles into Israel … from populated areas,” Sanders said, deploying standard Israeli government talking points.

When a member of the audience called out a question on whether Palestinians “have a right to resist,” Sanders shouted back, “Shut up! You don’t have the microphone!” and threatened to call in the police.

“Are you going to arrest people?” the constituent shouted back.

Sanders quickly diverted the conversation to the brutality of ISIS or Islamic State.

A year later, Palestine solidarity activists were thrown out of a Sanders campaign rally in Boston and threatened with arrest for bringing a sign that read, “Will ya #FeelTheBern 4 Palestine?”

As Sanders, who is nominally an independent, surges in the Democratic primary campaign against establishment favorite Hillary Clinton, the issue of Palestine has been virtually absent from the debate.

In an attempt to halt the momentum of voters flocking to Sanders’ populist demands for economic equality, Clinton has employed neoconservative anti-Iran talking points that frame the Vermont senator as dangerous for Israel.

It marks one of the few moments in which Israel has been mentioned at all during the Democratic primary campaign – a striking contrast to the Republican race, which has been dominated by anti-Muslim fanaticism wrapped in chauvinistic support for Israeli violence.

Though Clinton remains the favorite to secure the Democratic nomination, Sanders is no longer considered such a long shot.

Many of Sanders’ supporters will be hoping that his huge victory in yesterday’s New Hampshire primary will give him the momentum he needs to challenge Clinton in states where polls give her a strong lead.

It is therefore worth examining his record on Palestine and the Israelis, how his views have shifted and what we might expect from him as he attempts to broaden his appeal.

A review of Sanders’ record suggests that the changes in his views are rooted in political expediency rather than ideological commitment.

“No guns for Israel”

During the early 1960s, Sanders spent several months in an Israeli kibbutz, an experience of which he continues to speak fondly.

But that experience didn’t stop him from criticizing Israeli violence at the beginning of his political career.

According to Peter Diamondstone, co-founder of the socialist and anti-war Liberty Union Party that Sanders belonged to in the 1970s, Sanders advocated “no guns for Israel” during a 1971 campaign stop at a synagogue, the first year he ran for local political office.

After several failed runs on the Liberty Union ticket, Sanders abandoned the party and in 1981 was elected mayor of Burlington as an independent, by a margin of just 10 votes.

“In a departure which startled even the more liberal-minded burghers of Burlington,” The Guardian observed in 1990, Sanders “used his [mayoral] office to make lofty pronouncements on US foreign policy,” like “calling for a Palestinian homeland” (“Burlington Bernie takes on big parties in Congress fight,” The Guardian, 15 March 1990).

Nowadays Sanders still supports the official US position of a two-state solution, but at that time espousing a Palestinian state was still outside the mainstream.

Such views were on display at the 1988 news conference where he endorsed Jesse Jackson.

“You have the ability, when you have the United States of America, which is supporting the armies of the Middle East, to demand these people work out a reasonable settlement, protecting the rights of the Palestinians, protecting the rights of Israel,” Sanders said.

Later that same year, as he ran for a congressional seat, Sanders stuck to his position.

“The policy that Israelis shoot people is unacceptable. It is wrong that the United States provides arms to Israel,” Sanders told students at the University of Vermont. “We are not going to be the arms merchant for Middle Eastern nations.”

When questioned in 2015 about those statements from nearly three decades earlier, campaign spokesperson Michael Briggs vehemently denied that Sanders ever encouraged halting US weapons to Israel. Briggs accused the The Vermont Cynic, the University of Vermont student newspaper that reported on Sanders’ views, of presenting a “misinterpretation of old quotes.”

“He didn’t call military aid to Israel wrong,” Briggs told the newspaper last September. “Bernie does not and has not ever supported cutting off arms to Israel and that has never been his position.”

Briggs’ attempt to revise history is contradicted by Sanders’ clear statements at the videotaped 1988 press conference.

What changed?

After he finally won a congressional seat in 1990, Sanders was still willing to use his new platform to advance his long-held views. But the longer he stayed in Congress and the higher he climbed, the less he spoke out against Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights.

“I have a problem with appropriating $2 billion dollars to Egypt and $3 billion dollars to Israel. Let’s take care of some of the problems we have at home first,” Sanders argued on the House floor in 1991 as he cast a vote rejecting a $25 billion foreign aid measure (“House of Representatives rejects 25-billion-dollar foreign aid measure,” Agence France Presse, 31 October 1991).

That same year, Sanders voted to withhold $82.5 million in US aid to Israel unless it stopped building settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

More recently, however, Sanders has not called for cuts in aid to Israel as a form of pressure. Instead, he has fully endorsed US aid to Israel, while expressing hope that more economic aid to Israel and Egypt, as well as the Palestinians, could displace some military aid in an unspecified future.

The Sanders campaign did not respond to a question from The Electronic Intifada about whether a Sanders White House would still be willing to leverage US military aid to compel Israel to abide by international law.

Ineffectual voting record

Considering the Israel lobby’s bipartisan stranglehold on Congress, Sanders’ voting record could have been worse.

But rather than actively oppose US-sponsored atrocities against a defenseless and occupied people, more often than not Sanders has just kept his head down.

In late 2001, during the second intifada, Salonobserved, “Only one Jewish member of the House [Bernie Sanders] expressed any sort of disagreement” with a resolution blaming all the violence on Palestinian terrorism.

In 2004, Sanders was one of 45 congressional representatives to vote against a resolution expressing support for Israel’s wall annexing Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, after it was deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice.

Hillary Clinton, who was a US senator at the time, co-sponsored the Senate version of that bill, which her campaign now uses as a selling point.

In 2011, the Senate passed a resolution calling on the UN to rescind the Goldstone report, which found evidence of war crimes during Israel’s 2008–2009 bombing campaign in Gaza.

While some have credited Sanders for supposedly opposing this resolution, there was no recorded vote. The measure was passed by unanimous consent – a procedure which means no senator moved to block it, call for debate or for a roll call, not even Sanders.

As Gaza’s civilian population was once again decimated by US-supplied bombs in the summer of 2014, Sanders was one of 21 US senators who did not sign on to a resolution expressing unconditional solidarity with Israel.

“End the blockade of Gaza”

When asked last summer by Vox’s Ezra Klein if he identifies as a Zionist, Sanders was ambivalent, responding, “A Zionist? What does that mean? Do I think Israel has the right to exist? Yeah, I do. Do I believe that the United States should be playing an evenhanded role in terms of its dealings with the Palestinian community in Israel? Absolutely I do.”

In a November interview with Rolling Stone, Sanders issued his harshest criticism to date of Israel’s war on Gaza – while still justifying Israel’s actions.

“I think that Israel overreacted and caused more civilian damage than was necessary,” Sanders said. “They make the case, and I respect that, that they do try to make sure that civilians are not damaged. But the end result was that a lot of civilians were killed and a lot of housing was destroyed. There was terrible, terrible damage done.”

By taking this position, Sanders swept aside the findings of, among others, the UN’s independent inquiry, that Israel systematically targeted Palestinian residential buildings and infrastructure without any apparent military justification, resulting in massive carnage.

In the same interview, Sanders attempted to straddle the hawkish policies of the Washington consensus with the concerns of many in his progressive base.

“The United States will support the security of Israel, help Israel fight terrorist attacks against that country and maintain its independence,” he said. “But under my administration, the United States will maintain an evenhanded approach to the area.”

One aspect of such “evenhandedness” can be found on Sanders’ campaign website, where he seems to hold “both sides” equally responsible, ignoring the vast power imbalance between Israel, as a US-armed occupier and colonizer, and Palestinians who live under its military rule.

But in the United States of 2016, even a call for “evenhandedness” on these terms is outside the mainstream.

And lukewarm though his positions are, he has gone far beyond anything uttered by Barack Obama, who many mistakenly believed, despite all the evidence, would support Palestinian rights when he became president.

Sanders calls on Israel to “end the blockade of Gaza, and cease developing settlements on Palestinian land,” making him one of the only US senators to do so.

Still, it is a far cry from his brother, UK Green Party candidate Larry Sanders, who has expressed support for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel.

That said, Sanders’ record is a striking contrast to his opponent’s enthusiastic embrace of Israel’s right-wing leadership and brazen contempt for the lives of Palestinians.

A hawkish opponent

During Israel’s massacre of 551 children in Gaza in 2014, Hillary Clinton accused Palestinians of “stage managing” coverage of the slaughter to gain international sympathy and embarrass Israel.

Since her run for the US Senate seat for New York in 2000, Clinton has made a habit of demonizing Palestinians in order to court pro-Israel Jewish voters and donors.

She was so determined to prove her loyalty to Israel while in the Senate, she voted against a bill that sought to curb the use of cluster bombs, which disproportionately kill children, in heavily populated civilian areas.

The bill was inspired, in part, by Israel’s blanketing of southern Lebanon with some four million cluster munitions in 2006.

Yet the bill was defeated “primarily because it was depicted as an anti-Israel amendment,” according to the director of Human Rights Watch’s arms division.

Coincidentally, one of the bill’s sponsors was Senator Bernie Sanders.

One of Clinton’s most generous campaign contributors is billionaire media mogul Haim Saban, who freely admits that his number one priority is to influence US foreign policy in Israel’s favor.

Saban and his wife Cheryl have already donated $5 million to Clinton’s campaign.

Clinton has expressed her gratitude for such support with a vow “to make countering BDS” – the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – “a priority” of her presidency.

“I have stood with Israel my entire career” and if elected president, “I will continue this fight,” Clinton has said.

Following her loss to Sanders in New Hampshire, Clinton is reportedly planning a “fightback on Israel,” zooming in on “Sanders’ apparent lack of interest in Israel” to push Jewish voters to “rethink their support for the Jewish American who has just climbed higher than most others in Democratic politics,” according to The Jewish Daily Forward.

Even Democratic elites – the party’s most educated, highest income and most active supporters – are turning away from Israel. A survey last summer found that half consider Israel a racist country and about three-quaters think it has too much influence over US policy.

Notably, 45 percent of Democratic elites said they would be more inclined to vote for a political candidate who criticized Israeli violence against Palestinians, versus 23 percent who said they would be turned off.

This might explain why Sanders has so far abstained from much of the ritualistic pandering required of US presidential candidates – there is no record of him addressing AIPAC, the most influential Israel lobby group in the US. And it is unclear when he last visited Israel.

As a candidate running on an anti-establishment platform, Sanders is perfectly positioned to challenge Clinton on the bipartisan Israel-can-do-no-wrong consensus that dominates the US political system.

If Sanders’ challenge to Clinton’s frontrunner status continues to grow, and in the scenario where he becomes the Democratic nominee, his views on Israel will come under even closer scrutiny.

But absent significant and ongoing pressure from his base, there’s still little reason to believe a Sanders administration would be all that different on Palestine than the current one.

The coming months will reveal which Sanders will prevail: the one prepared to criticize Israel, albeit couched in professions of support, or the strident Sanders ready to set the police on constituents demanding accountability for Israel’s slaughter of children in Gaza.

A group of Italian professors and researchers are planning to boycott Israeli academic institutions, saying the schools are complicit in “violations of international law and human rights”.

Some 170 scholars from more than 50 Italian universities and research organisations have signed a pledge committing to the boycott. The signatories described themselves as “a solid critical block of scholars” who were “no longer willing to tolerate Israeli academic complicity with Israel’s state violence”.

“The utter lack of any serious condemnation on their part since the foundation of the state of Israel led to the initiative,” the authors said in a statement.

The academics – who teach and work at prominent universities, including the University of Bologna, the University of Rome and the University of Milan – noted that they were part of a growing global trend of scholars taking a stand for Palestinian rights.

“I think it is important that members of the Italian academia have joined the international boycott, because this is a sign that even in Italy, the BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] movement is becoming mainstream,” Federico Zanettin, an associate professor of English and translation at the University of Perugia, told Al Jazeera.

The BDS movement is a Palestinian-led campaign that calls for economic and political pressure on Israel to give equal rights to its Palestinian citizens, and to end its occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territories, including the Syrian Golan Heights.

“The BDS movement brings back the real meaning and value to the notions of political agency and collective actions,” Alaa Tartir, programmes director at al-Shabaka Palestinian Policy Network, told Al Jazeera. “[The] reality of popular ownership to one of the tools for the self-determination struggle, is a key factor that explains the success, legitimacy and influential role of BDS.”

Tartir pointed to the spread of boycotts on campuses across Europe and the United States as evidence of the movement’s growing success.

“This is how the relationship between the occupied and the occupier should be: a relationship based on continuous confrontation to realise rights,” he said. “This is why it constitutes a major source of hope for Palestinians at home and in exile.”

Late last year, more than 300 academics from dozens of British universities pledged to boycott Israeli academic institutions to protest against what they called “intolerable human rights violations” against the Palestinian people. This came after a group of writers and academics, among them the renowned author JK Rowling, criticised boycotts that “singl[ed] out Israel” as “divisive and discriminatory”.

Italy’s boycott proponents have also faced some resistance at home over the years. Italian author Umberto Eco criticised a cultural boycott of Israel at the 25th Jerusalem Book Fair in 2011. Eco, one of Italy’s most celebrated authors, said: “I consider it absolutely crazy and fundamentally racist to identify a scholar, a private citizen, with the politics of his government.”

In Israel, the Association of University Heads condemned the BDS initiative, calling it “an aggressive global anti-Israel campaign, orchestrated by a fringe interest group, who for several years has supported the spreading of demonic lies against the State of Israel.

“Over the past several years, the BDS movement has been leading a hate campaign on academic, political and economic fronts, in order to incite hatred towards Israel,” the association said in a statement to Al Jazeera. “[Such] ideas have no place in academia. Academic boycotts clearly contradict both academic ethos and values and contaminate academic collaborations and international research overall.”

The association added: “It is both ironic and absurd that specifically those supporting such boycotts are using politics in an attempt to incite and introduce hatred and racism into the Israeli academia. With these actions, they are attempting to create a division where one does not exist.”

The signatories say the initiative is particularly significant because of the special relationship between Israel and Italy.

“Italy [is] one of Israel’s key military and academic partners in Europe,” the declaration noted. “A military cooperation agreement between the two countries provides for joint military research, training exercises and development of weapons systems.”

In March, the Italian Society for Middle Eastern Studies will host a panel discussion on the general implications of academic and cultural boycott campaigns against Israel during its annual conference in Catania. This will mark the first time an academic association in Italy has publicly debated the Palestinian call for BDS.

Simona Taliani, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Turin, said Italian academics had just started to become engaged in boycott efforts.

“The campaign is important because it better informs academics in Italy,” Taliani told Al Jazeera. “It’s so urgent to let people [become] aware of the complicity of Israeli universities in military investments and the repressive system against Palestinians.”

According to the signatories, the declaration also serves to support Palestinian scholars who “experience grave human rights violations and denial of their basic academic freedoms.” The initiative, however, does allow for individual collaborations with Israeli peers.

The boycott focuses specifically on the Haifa-based Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, which has developed technologies that have been employed by the Israeli military such as remote-controlled bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian houses.

Some of Italy’s largest universities have collaborated with Technion, “which develops dangerous technologies for the systematic… colonisation of Palestine”, Gabriele Usberti, a professor at the University of Siena, told Al Jazeera.

The signatories to the boycott pledge said that a number of Italian universities had cooperation agreements with Technion, including the Polytechnic Universities of Milano and Turin, and the universities of Cagliari, Florence, Perugia, Rome and Turin. A spokesman for Technion declined to comment on the allegations pertaining to the institute, and referred Al Jazeera to the Association of University Heads.

For some of the signatories, the decision to take part was not easy. Francesca Biancani, an adjunct professor at Bologna University, said she decided to heed the call for a boycott after a “complex and at times painful process” and “long consideration”, following 15 years of visits to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

“Episodes of racist comments made by academics, and measures approved by academic institutions – Tel Aviv University for one – to financially support students serving in the army in those days hit the bottom line in my view,” Biancani told Al Jazeera.

“It was clear at that point that all my concerns about academic freedom simply could not be prioritised over the rights of the Palestinian people.”

France has issued an ultimatum to Israel, saying it will recognise a Palestinian state if a renewed push for a two-state solution fails.

The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, announced on Friday that France was trying to convene an international peace summit to renew diplomatic efforts by Israel and the Palestinians. He said that if diplomacy failed, France would formally recognise a Palestinian state.

Speaking at a conference of French diplomats in Paris, Fabius said: “Unfortunately, Israeli settlement construction continues. We must not let the two-state solution unravel. It is our responsibility as a permanent member of the UN security council.”

The Palestinians have welcomed France’s renewed efforts to negotiate a two-state solution at talks that are expected to include leaders from the US, Europe and Arab nations. The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said any agreement would require full cessation of Israeli settlement activities within a “specified timeframe”.

Israel has rejected the French drive toward a peace initiative. A senior official said Fabius’s threat to recognise a Palestine state was counter-productive. “There is no logic in a deadline for recognition of a Palestinian state, it will only encourage the Palestinians not to negotiate,” he said.

In April 2014, efforts led by the US – particularly the secretary of state, John Kerry – to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinian territories collapsed. No serious plans to resume talks have been made since.

In December 2014, France supported a UN security council resolution creating a framework for a final resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Those efforts failed due to opposition from Israel and the US on one hand, and an unwillingness by the Palestinians on the other to compromise on the wording of the decision.

Last year France suggested creating an international support group for peace talks. The group met on the sidelines of the UN last year, but without Israelis of Palestinians. Since that meeting Fabius has pushed for the UN security council to condemn Israeli settlements, but this also failed.

]]>https://nakba.co.uk/2016/02/15/france-says-it-will-recognise-palestinian-state-if-new-peace-effort-fails/feed/0waheedmiahTair Kaminer: Israeli teenager jailed for refusing to do military service because of Palestinian territories occupationhttps://nakba.co.uk/2016/02/15/tair-kaminer-israeli-teenager-jailed-for-refusing-to-do-military-service-because-of-palestinian-territories-occupation/
https://nakba.co.uk/2016/02/15/tair-kaminer-israeli-teenager-jailed-for-refusing-to-do-military-service-because-of-palestinian-territories-occupation/#respondMon, 15 Feb 2016 19:14:18 +0000http://nakba.co.uk/?p=1569

A 19-year-old Israeli woman who refused to do compulsory military service as a protest against the occupation of the Palestinian territories has been released from jail – but could return within days.

Tair Kaminer’s case has been the subject of fierce debate in Israel, driving calls for reform to laws punishing conscientious objectors, while seeing her labelled as a “traitor” by others.

Before being sent to prison for 20 days earlier this month, she said her experience volunteering with the Israeli Scouts helping children traumatised by the Israel-Gaza conflict made her unable to accept conscription.

“I saw children (in Sderot) growing up in a warzone,” Ms Kaminer told Israel Social TV.

“I saw the effect on them – the fear and sometimes, the hatred.

“I realised I did not want to take part, not to contribute to further hatred and fear and not to take part in the occupation.”

Protesters have held regular demonstrations outside her prison and training bases for conscripts, while the Mesarvot campaign group is taking support messages from around the world.

Amnesty International Israel opposed the sentence, which was also raised in the Houses of Parliament, where Caroline Lucas brought an early day motion on 19 January noting MPs’ “concern”.

The Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion wrote: “With tensions high in Israel, this is a particularly difficult time to be a conscientious objector … (we call) on the Government to request the Israeli authorities to accept the conscientious objection of Israeli citizens who do not wish to bear arms against a civilian population under military occupation.”

The statement, supported by 19 MPs from parties including Labour, the Conservatives, Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, called for legal exemptions for conscientious objectors and the “immediate and unconditional release” of Ms Kaminer and other prisoners of conscience.

Supporters said Ms Kaminer was released on Wednesday and Russia Today filmed her emotional reunion with her parents.

Her father, Micha Kaminer, told the broadcaster: “I think it is a stupid move by the government and the military authorities to force people to serve in contradiction to their beliefs.

“A girl declares that she has a conscience opposing the occupation and she wants to do an alternative service is being put in jail – that’s just outrageous.”

Ms Kaminer could be jailed many more times if she continues to refuse conscription, with the next term reportedly starting as soon as Sunday, when she is due to report to a training base.

Each refusal to enlist is normally met with a prison term of up to a month, which is repeated until the IDF grants an official discharge.

Recent cases have seen conscientious objectors jailed up to 10 times, for almost 180 days each.

Calling military service a “political decision”, Ms Kaminer previously said that she aspires to peace, quality and security for everyone living in Israel and the Palestinian territories but that compulsory military service was not the way to ensure it.

“When I look at all of these children, and the next generation on both sides and the reality in which they grow up, I see only more trauma and pain,” she said. “Military jail frightens me less than our society losing its humanity.”

Military service is compulsory for all Israeli citizens over the age of 18, with the exception of groups including Arab Israelis, Orthodox women and anyone unable to serve for medical reasons.

Arutz Sheva reported that police complaints have been launched against Ms Kaminer alleging that she is “inciting” others to dodge the draft.

The Israeli Embassy in London has not yet responded to The Independent’s request for a comment.

The Palestinian community in Berlin, including representatives from a number of Palestinian factions, marked on Friday the global day of support for Palestinian rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Palsawa.com reported.

Palestinians gathered in front of the headquarters of the German foreign ministry. They raised the Palestinian flag and a number of pro-Palestine placards.

The Palestinian embassy in Berlin took part in writing a letter sent to the German foreign minister explaining the violations practiced against Palestinians by the different Israeli governments.

The letter called on the German government to support the rights of Palestinians in the OPT and to take measures against Israeli violations.

The Supreme Court of Arabs in Israel invited Palestinians all over the world to consider 30 January a day of support for Palestinian rights in the OPT.

Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has accused UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, of giving a “tailwind to terror” after the UN head criticised Israel for continuing to build settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and describing it as an affront to the Palestinian people and the international community.

In unusually strong language, Ban also questioned Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution, claiming Palestinian violence was the result of “frustration”.

“Palestinian frustration is growing under the weight of a half-century of occupation and the paralysis of the peace process,” Ban told a UN security council meeting on Tuesday. He called the settlement building “an affront to the Palestinian people and to the international community”.

He also rejected the prospect of Israeli security measures on the West Bank bringing an end to the latest cycle of violence, which began in October.

“Security measures alone will not stop the violence. They cannot address the profound sense of alienation and despair driving some Palestinians – especially young people.”

Ban’s comments triggered the latest in a recent series of diplomatic spats between Netanyahu and various foreign leaders and organisations.

In recent weeks Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition have been embroiled in fierce exchanges with the EU, the Swedish foreign minister, Margot Wallström, and with the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, who have all made critical comments.

Ban attracted Israeli ire over remarks about the current violence between Israelis and Palestinians he made ahead of a UN security council debate on the Middle East, including the Palestinian question, when he condemned attacks but added: “It is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.”

The Israeli government claims the violence is the result of Palestinian incitement.

Responding to Ban’s remarks, Netanyahu said: “The secretary general’s remarks provide a tailwind for terror. There is no justification for terror. Those Palestinians who murder do not want to build a state, they want to destroy a state, and they say this openly.”

“They want to murder Jews for being Jews and they say this openly. They do not murder for peace and they do not murder for human rights.”

Netanyahu added: “The UN has long lost its neutrality and moral power; these comments by the secretary general do little to improve its standing.” Ban’s comments were also criticised by other Israeli political figures.

The latest row comes amid warnings from diplomats – and some Israeli analysts – that Israel is becoming increasingly isolated on the diplomatic stage.

The Palestinians want an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 war. The last round of peace talks broke down in April 2014, and Israeli-Palestinian violence has surged in recent months.

Israel recently confirmed that it would appropriate a large tract of fertile land in the occupied West Bank. The land is near Jordan, in an area where Israel already has many illegal settlement farms built on land Palestinians seek for a state.

Ban said he was “deeply troubled” by reports that the Israeli government had approved plans for more than 150 new homes in “illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank”.

“These provocative acts are bound to increase the growth of settler populations, further heighten tensions and undermine any prospects for a political road ahead,” Ban told a United Nations security council meeting on the Middle East.

Samantha Power, US ambassador to the United Nations, said Washington also strongly opposed settlement activity.

“Steps aimed at advancing the Israeli settlement programme … are fundamentally incompatible with the two-state solution and raise legitimate questions about Israel’s long-term intentions,” Power told the council.

About 550,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to Israeli government and thinktank statistics. About 350,000 Palestinians live in East Jerusalem and 2.7 million in the West Bank.

Riyad Mansour, the chief Palestinian delegate at the United Nations, called on the security council take action against Israeli settlements.

“It must involve measures by all states and go beyond not rendering aid or assistance to holding Israel accountable for its actions,” Mansour said.

Two young Palestinians were shot dead by a security guard in an Israeli settlement after allegedly stabbing two women, seriously injuring one, on Monday.

The incident took place at a supermarket in Beit Horon settlement near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

Israeli media reported that Ibrahim Usama Allan, 23, and Hussein Abu Ghosh, 17, were shot as they ran, suggesting the two may have been extrajudicially executed.

The incident came two days after Ruqayya Abu Eid, a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, was shot dead by a security guard after she allegedly tried to stab him in the Anatot settlement near Jerusalem.

A Palestinian member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, condemned the girl’s slaying.

“Even if she had a knife, it would have been possible to arrest a girl that age instead of killing her,” Esawi Frej of the Meretz party said.

“Instead of attacking the Swedish foreign minister and claiming that her comments are detached from reality, Netanyahu should check what’s happening in his country and how children are being killed without a trial,” Frej added.

The Israeli prime minister and other top officials lashed out against Sweden earlier this month after its foreign minister, Margot Wallström, called for an investigation into the slayings of dozens of Palestinians in recent months.

Abu Eid was buried in the village of al-Karmel east of the West Bank town of Yatta, near Hebron, on Sunday.

West Bank attacks

A 15-year-old from Yatta was detained on suspicion of stabbing and killing an Israeli woman, 39-year-old Dafna Meir, in the settlement of Otniel last week.

Also last week, Othman Muhammad Shaalan, 19, from the West Bank city of Bethlehem, was shot and injured after stabbing and injuring a pregnant Israeli woman in the Tekoa settlement.

A security guard fired at Shaalan, wounding the boy in his leg.

Nabil Halabiya, 17, from the village of Abu Dis near Jerusalem, was killed on Saturday when a bomb he was carrying exploded.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that medical personnel were delayed for two hours before being allowed to evacuate Halabiya’s body, the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretzreported.

The following day, an unknown assailant fired on a vehicle being driven by an Israeli near the Dolev settlement. An Israeli army spokesperson told the Ma’an News Agency that no injuries were reported.

More than 160 Palestinians and approximately two dozen Israelis, as well as a US citizen, have been slain in a spike of deadly confrontations since the beginning of October.

Most of those Palestinians slain were shot dead by Israeli soldiers and police during alleged attacks. Dozens of others were killed during protests.

Human rights groups have criticized Israel for reflexively using lethal force when alleged attackers do not pose an immediate threat to anyone’s life.

That appears to be the case in the slaying of Wisam Qasarwah, 21, at the Huwwara military checkpoint near the northern West Bank city of Nablus on 16 January.

Describing it as a “crime of excessive use of force,” the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported that Qasarwah had thrown a knife towards soldiers stationed at the checkpoint, injuring none.

Snipers stationed in a military tower immediately shot the young man dead. A medical examination found that Qasarwah was hit by 10 bullets throughout his body, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

Slain on way to class

An investigation by Haaretz found that 17-year-old Adnan Mashni was shot dead by Israeli soldiers at Beit Einoun junction near the West Bank city of Hebron while on his way to physics class on 12 January.

Mashni had traveled to the junction in a taxi van and crossed the road and entered into a second van when another young man in the vehicle jumped out and yelled “God is great” while brandishing a knife or hatchet, according to Haaretz.

The armed young man, Muhammad Kawazba from the village of Sair, was immediately shot and killed.

The driver of the van from which Kawazba emerged “tried to drive away as fast as he could, for fear that he too would be shot,” Haaretz added.

“The soldiers, seeing the vehicle pulling out, opened fire at it, though they had no idea who was inside it.”

The driver managed to escape on foot while Mashni, still inside the van, was struck in the upper right side of his body and died soon after in hospital.

Israeli authorities have demolished several homes in the strategically sensitive E1 region of the occupied West Bank, displacing at least 17 Palestinians, among them children.

Israeli troops forcibly evacuated local residents and bulldozers flattened four homes in the Jabal al-Baba community, on the outskirts of occupied East Jerusalem, on Thursday, according to a local spokesman.

“They showed up at four in the morning and removed everyone from their homes – men, women, children,” Daoud al-Jahalin, the spokesman of the Jahalin Bedouin tribe in the neighbouring village of Abu Nuwwar, told Al Jazeera.

“There were no journalists there to witness it so they did it all by force, pointing their weapons at people and hitting many of the young men.”

Jabal al-Baba and Abu Nuwwar are among more than 20 Palestinian Bedouin villages – known as the Jahalin communities – in the E1 area of the central West Bank.

An estimated 300 people live in Jabal al-Baba, while another 700 live next door in Abu Nuwwar.

Israel intends to demolish those communities and build Jewish-only settlements in their place, effectively dissecting the West Bank into separate halves and eliminating the possiblity of territorial congruity in a potential Palestinian state.

According to Israel’s relocation plan, the local Palestinian residents will be moved to a nearby planned township less than a kilometre away and provided with basic services they have been so far denied, including electricity, water and sewage services.

“Legally speaking, involves elements of war crimes and crimes against humanity particularly related to extensive destruction of property, land appropriation and further persecution of Palestinians,” Mona Sabella of the Al-Haq rights group told Al Jazeera.

“The plan would result in further violations of fundamental rights, including the right to self-determination, right to freedom of movement and the right to health, among others.”

Throughout occupied East Jerusalem and its peripheries, some 90,000 Palestinians are facing potential displacement, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

According to a Al-Haq report published last month, life for Palestinian Jerusalemites has grown more difficult in recent months, with Israeli forces using live ammunition at a greater frequency, raiding hospitals and erecting more checkpoints, among other measures.

Yet, most of the Jahalin communities’ residents are already UN-registered refugees who were uprooted in 1951 when the newly-formed Israeli government expelled them from their ancestral lands in the Negev region of the country.

“This would be the second time we are displaced,” Jahalin said.

Israel’s Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) told Al Jazeera “demolitions were carried out” to remove “illegal structures” from the area.

Thursday’s demolitions came just a day after Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah condemned the forcible displacement of the Jahalin communities.

“Israel’s systematic violation of international laws is no longer acceptable by the international community,” Hamdallah said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Christopher Gunness, spokesman for the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), said the latest demolitions are part of an ongoing pattern.

“We are seeing continued and repeated forced displacement, often on a large scale, and which is often related to illegal settlements,” he told Al Jazeera.

“This highlights time and time again the need for a just and durable solution for people who are dispossessed. These people are facing an acute and chronic protection crisis,” Gunness added.

The E1 corridor is located in Area C, which refers to the 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli administration and off-limits to the Palestinian Authority.

According to Bimkom, an Israeli organisation that advocates for planning rights, Israeli land authorities have increased the pressure on Palestinians in E1 in recent months, demolishing homes and issuing dozens of new eviction notices.

“The main idea is to cleanse the area [of Palestinian communities] as much as possible, particularly in places where there is a clear Israeli interest,” Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, director of Bimkom’s planning and community department, told Al Jazeera.

Between 2009 and 2014, Israeli settlements expanded by 23 percent in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Upwards of half a million Jewish Israelis already live in more than 150 Jewish-only settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Under international pressure, Netanyahu formally froze settlement expansion plans in E1 in 2013.

In late December, however, the Israeli group Peace Now revealed that Israel’s Ministry of Housing is planning to build 55,548 new homes in the West Bank, including 8,372 in E1.

On January 7, a low-flying agricultural aircraft sprayed herbicides on to Palestinian farmlands along the eastern border, eradicating or damaging up to 162 hectares of crops and farmland along the Israeli border fence.

“Herbicides are sprayed in high concentrations. Thus, they remain embedded in the soil, and then find their way to the water basin. This constitutes a real hazard for the population,” said Anwar Abu Assi, manager of the chemical laboratory at the Ministry of Agriculture.

The zone, which amounts to an estimated 17 percent of the entire territory of the Gaza Strip and a third of its agricultural lands, erodes into the Strip’s most vital and fertile soils.

Yousef Shahin, 40, was having enough trouble sustaining his farmland when, last week, an Israeli raid targeted the water tank that supplied his farm and neighbouring farms in the al-Faraheen area east of Khan Younis.

The tank and collection system had cost Shahin and his neighbours some $15,000. Shahin said governmental support was lacking.”Without support, we can never reconstruct the system again. We don’t have running water for irrigation; I think we lost this season.”

The Israeli army’s move had added another element to the suffering of Shahin and his fellow farmers.

With the Strip being merely five kilometres wide in some areas, a few hundred metres prove essential to the Strip’s food security. Over the past few months, Israeli soldiers have killed at least 16 Palestinians who entered the zone, most of them protesters who were shot at by snipers while participating in demonstrations near the fence.

Furthermore, scores of casualties have been reported among farmers who were merely tending to or approaching their lands. “We had to jeopardise our lives daily growing these crops; now all our efforts are in vain,” said Shahin while examining a new implant of spinach.

He lost crops that included spinach, peas, parsley and beans. Whether or not his new endeavours to cultivate will succeed remains unknown.

Farmers confirm that the damages of the latest spraying extend beyond the so-called “buffer zone”, as the winds carried the chemicals further inside the Strip. They also fear consequences of such materials may affect their lands in the long run.

Abu Assi explained that each herbicide or pesticide has a safety period that needs to be observed before attempting to grow new crops. At such high concentrations, he fears the lands are likely to constitute a hazard for a long time.

During the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza, the agricultural sector sustained losses and damages of up to $550m. Some 14,000 hectares were razed and destroyed; thousands of hectares of crops were also lost because farmers were unable to reach their lands amid the fighting.

A few days ago, Israeli warplanes bombed Gaza’s main agricultural experiment station, causing $300,000-worth of damages and destroying the station’s building, laboratories, vehicles and a large power generator.

The station developed new seeds and strains for use by local farmers. Bombed and completely destroyed during the 2014 war, Israel seems insistent on keeping the station out of service, effectively stifling every Palestinian attempt to attain self-sufficiency or independence, even agriculturally.

The station’s manager, Shaher al-Rifi, says that the facility is currently 70 percent out of service. With the Israeli restrictions on imports of tractors and agricultural machinery, it is likely to remain so for a long time to come.

Adel Atallah, a general director at the agriculture ministry, explains that the whole agricultural sector has for years been running on old machines. “Domestic farmers face problems trying to replenish anything that goes out of service. What isn’t banned is stalled at the crossings by Israel.”

The troubles facing the agricultural sector in Gaza span a wide myriad of difficulties. Irrigation is disturbed by the continuous power interruptions, which sometimes last more than 12 hours a day. Farmers depend on power generators to pump water, and the costs of fuel add another factor to their economic vulnerability.

Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights has said that Israel is escalating the targeting of children in Gaza and continues its “violations” of international laws aimed at “protecting children during armed conflicts”, Anadolu Agency reported on Sunday.

In its annual report, Al-Mezan said that Israel did not respect international and UN laws regarding Palestinians in Gaza, stressing that children are the most vulnerable as a result of Israeli violations.

The report said that the Israeli army killed seven children and wounded 213 in Gaza during 2015. In addition, 34 children were arrested during repeated invasions of the farmlands across the eastern border or during their attacks on the fishing boats off the Gaza coast.

Al-Mezan warned that the restrictions imposed by Israel on the coastal enclave constitute a “violation of international humanitarian law”.

On June 2014, Israel launched a 51-day offensive on Gaza that killed 2,322 Palestinians, including 578 children, and wounded more than 11,000 others.

A student from Bethlehem removes her gold crucifix necklace and donates it to the cause. A man of modest means paying for his own cancer treatment contributes 50 shekels (£8.80). Day labourers hard pressed to feed their families dig into their pockets.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, demolitions by Israeli authorities of the family homes of Palestinian attackers are having an unintended consequence: uniting the local community in sympathy and solidarity for the dead and their families.

The funds collected in the latest charity drive will go towards rebuilding the family home of Muhannad Halabi, a 19-year-old who was shot dead on 3 October after he stabbed two Israeli men to death in the Muslim quarter of occupied East Jerusalem, prompting copycat attacks and heralding the current wave of unrest. Halabi also stabbed and seriously wounded an Israeli woman and, after grabbing a gun from one of his victims, shot her two-year-old son in the leg, police said.

The collection effort was launched 10 January, a day after Israeli army bulldozers demolished the Halabi family home in a punishment that Israel says is a measure to deter further attacks. By yesterday it had raised 650,000 shekels from passersby in downtown Ramallah and on the campus of nearby Birzeit University.

A parallel drive to rebuild four destroyed family homes of slain assailants – to most Palestinians, they are martyrs – is under way in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

“We are telling the occupation, you can destroy but we will continue to build,” said Ahmad al-Ouri, a former prisoner who is on the organising committee of the drive, which is an independent initiative led in part by employees of the Palestinian Authority, but not formally linked to it.

In Ramallah’s main Manara Square last Thursday, people alighted from cars and pedestrians stopped to slip coins and bills into a box decorated with a poster of Halabi and a picture of his parents standing in the rubble of their home in Surda village, north-east of Ramallah. The posters declared Halabi “the detonator of the Jerusalem uprising”.

Rather than a terrorist, the people here contributing money view Halabi as a hero who died defending Islam’s third-holiest site, the al-Aksa mosque, which Palestinians perceive – despite Israeli denials – to be under threat from Israel. His parents and siblings, they feel, are innocent victims of Israel’s home-demolitions policy.

“We feel for the family and thank God we have enough so that we can give,” says Maria Mohammed, from the nearby town of Turmus Aya, as her three-year-old daughter, Rasan, drops a coin in the box. “It’s so sad to see them with their home destroyed while we have a home and our kids can live in comfort.”

“We are one people and we help each other in times of stress,” adds Thaer Abu Baker, a staffer at the Jawal telecom company, after passing on a donation of 12,500 shekels collected from 50 employees.

The wave of violence against security forces and civilians known in Arabic as the haba shaabiya, or popular uprising, has been the work of individuals rather than orchestrated groups, but opinion polls show that two thirds of the public in the West Bank and Gaza support the attacks.

Mr Ouri says the donations reflect support for the rising and are “a crucial part of participation in the haba shaabiya”.

Shaul Shay, former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council, says demolitions are an effective tool to discourage attacks. “When deterrence spreads it can save the lives not only of Jews but also of the terrorist,” he says.

The practice was revived last year after a nine-year break on the grounds it was ineffective. Dovish Israeli opponents of the policy say its primary purpose is to enable the right-wing government to show their domestic audience that it is responding toughly to the attacks.

Since the unrest started at the beginning of October, 24 Israelis and one US citizen have died in a series of stabbings, car rammings and shootings. At least 148 Palestinians have died, 98 of whom were behind attacks, according to Israel. In the latest violence, an Israeli woman was killed yesterday in a stabbing attack inside her home in the Otniel settlement in the West Bank, the army said. Media reports said her children were home at the time.

Jamal Zakout, head of the al-Ard think tank in Ramallah and a member of the Palestine National Council, says one of the reasons the campaign has struck such a chord is because people do not believe the Palestinian government is providing for families whose homes are destroyed.

“If people would see the government declare a solution or provide an alternative home and make a political campaign internationally, maybe they wouldn’t feel as strongly that they have to do this,” he says.

Bassem Zakarneh, head of the 30,000 strong union of Palestinian Authority (PA) civil servants is proposing the government deduct 1 per cent from their monthly salaries to go to families whose homes were demolished. The office of the spokesman of the PA cabinet did not respond to a request for comment.

Standing near the rubble of his villa in Surda, Halabi’s father, Shafiq, a plumber, says his son was “martyred for the sake of al-Aqsa”.

He said Israel had also confiscated the land on which the house was built and that he would need a significant chunk of money to buy alternative land. He claimed such demolitions would only increase hatred of Israel among Palestinians.

“I worked to build this house for me and the children. How do you expect me to feel?”

Of the campaign, he said: “I feel the people are behind me and that Mohanad will be in the mind, hearts and memories of Palestinians forever.”

The move by the US church’s pension fund manager Wespath was taken under its ethical investment policy, as Israel falls among the “high risk” countries it has identified for “a prolonged and systematic pattern of human rights abuses.”

The United Methodist Church says it is the second largest Protestant denomination in the US and counts almost 13 million members worldwide.

United Methodist Kairos Response (UMKR), a group that advocates within the church for Palestinian rights, hailed the measure as “the first time a major church pension fund has acted to preclude investment in Israeli banks that sustain Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land.”

“Only a first step”

Wespath has now confirmed it has “taken action to remove from investment” the shares of seven firms that appear among its list of 39 ineligible companies, which would include the two Israeli banks.

“We commend the pension fund for taking this significant step in disassociating from the illegal occupation of Palestinian land,” UMKR co-chair Reverend Michael Yoshii said in a press release. “But as United Methodist policy opposes the occupation, this is only a first step towards ending our financial complicity in the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.”

In 2012, the church’s general conference rejected a motion calling for divestment, but adopted a policy calling for the boycott of goods made in Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian land in violation of international law.

UMKR points out that Wespath still holds shares in 10 companies “located inside the illegal settlements and in several others that lend important support to Israel’s occupation.”

Reverend John Wagner, a member of the UMKR divestment committee, said his group urges Wespath fund managers “to maintain consistency and divest from all companies that profit from these same settlements.”

Palestinian welcome

Bisan Mitri, a spokesperson for the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the steering group of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, welcomed the decision: “This historic step shows, with concrete measures, the ethical commitment of the United Methodist Church to peace and justice.”

“Israeli banks finance the decades-long occupation and oppression of Palestinians and are a key pillar in sustaining the brutality of Israel’s military, the unrelenting expansion of Israel’s settlements, and the plundering of Palestinian resources,” Mitri added.

Rifat Kassis of the Kairos Palestine initiative noted that the Methodists’ decision “is only the latest of the church denominations to take to heart the do-no-harm principle that Christian denominations hold dear.”

“We are getting closer to a united Christian front taking a principled, moral and effective stand against Israel’s occupation and violations of international law,” Kassis said.

Momentum

Wespath’s decision to divest from the Israeli banks will give momentum to those campaigning for four proposals put forward by UMKR for the church to divest from other companies complicit in the Israeli occupation.

The resolutions will be considered at the church’s 2016 general conference in Portland, Oregon, in May.

In the past two years, the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Church of Christ have adopted divestment. These hard-won decisions came after years-long debates in the face of stiff, well-funded opposition from Israel lobby groups.

In February 2014, Luxembourg’s state pension fund excluded Israel’s main banks from its investment portfolio because of their involvement in Israeli settlements and human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) on Wednesday hailed the Swedish Foreign Minister’s response to the large number of Palestinian deaths, calling her “humane and courageous”.

Israel has summoned the Swedish ambassador over Foreign Minister Margot Wallström’s call for a probe into Tel Aviv’s “extrajudicial executions” of Palestinians.

Anadolu Agency said that it received a statement issued from the PA foreign ministry welcoming Wallström’s comments.

The PA ministry called for the adoption of an international stance similar to Sweden, away from “political fear”. The PA also stressed that it is “eager to keep up with the peace process” with the Israelis.

According to the statement, the Israeli government is practicing “political terrorism against the Swedish foreign minister”.

Wallström’s remarks were condemned by Israeli officials, including Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely who said that Israel will close its doors to visits from Swedish officials, according to Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed fears on Monday that the European Union may impose more sanctions against the illegal West Bank settlements, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported.

“We are facing a crisis which is not small with the European Union on the political level. They have marked settlements products and we do not know if they are going to do something else,” the paper quoted Netanyahu saying during a meeting with the Likud bloc in the Knesset.

According to the newspaper, the European Union is expected to issue a decision on its next steps on the Israeli-Palestinian issue during the EU foreign ministers’ monthly meeting in Brussels next week.

Some EU countries, led by France, have been in discussions about the possibility of pushing a Security Council resolution against Israeli settlements.

In November, Haaretz revealed that the EU has distributed a confidential document that includes a list of sanctions against Israel.

The document included proposed sanctions against European companies operating in the illegal settlements and preventing settlers who commit acts of violence against Palestinians from entering Europe.

“Israel has responded harshly to the European decision against the settlements by cutting contacts with the European foreign services and the EU institutions in Brussels in late November 2015,” Netanyahu added.

Spain’s United Left party has adopted the call for the global boycott of Israel (BDS), with the support of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, as members of the Castrillon City Council in the Asturias province voted in favour of the campaign.

Having reviewed the reasons for adopting the BDS campaign, the general coordinator of the Unified Left, Jose Luis Garrido, called on other Spanish cities to take the same action and to boycott Israel at all levels until it withdraws from the occupied territories and respects international law and the rights of the Palestinian people to independence and freedom.

In his speech before members of the municipal council he highlighted international laws and United Nations resolutions that Israel has not implemented. He also mentioned the illegality of the settlements and the Separation Wall, in addition to the issue of refugees, Israel’s racist policies and the suffering of the residents of the Gaza Strip.

This move comes in light of similar decisions to boycott Israeli which were made by other Spanish institutions, the most recent being the University of Barcelona.

Israeli violations of international law and international humanitarian law in the oPt continued during the reporting period (31 December 2015 – 06 January 2016).

Israeli attacks in the West Bank & Gaza:

Shootings

Israeli forces have continued to commit crimes, inflicting civilian casualties. They have also continued to use excessive force against Palestinian civilians participating in peaceful protests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the majority of whom were youngsters. Occupied East Jerusalem witnessed similar attacks. During the reporting period, Israeli forces killed two Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. Moreover, they wounded eight others, including a child. Six of them, including the child, were wounded in the West Bank, while the two others were wounded in the Gaza Strip.

Incursions

During the reporting period, Israeli forces conducted at least 79 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and 5 ones in occupied East Jerusalem. During these incursions, Israeli forces arrested at least 64 Palestinian civilians, including nine children. Twelve of these civilians, including four children, were arrested in East Jerusalem.

Efforts to create a Jewish majority

In the context of house demolitions, on 04 January 2016, Israeli forces moved into al-Mukaber Mountain village, southeast of occupied Jerusalem. They raided a building in which Safa Abu Jamal and her family live. They took all of them out of the house and detained and attacked one of her brothers. Moreover, they closed the windows with iron and tin plates, after which, they poured concrete into the apartment. Israeli forces claimed that the targeted apartment belongs to her brother Alaa “based on confidential information”. It should be noted that Alaa Abu Jamal was killed by Israeli forces after he carried out a run-over and stabbing attack that resulted in the killing of an Israeli Rabbi on 13 October 2015.

Around the same time, another Israeli force raided a house belonging to the family of Khalil Mohammed Elayan and his sons. They dismissed all the occupants out and destroyed the inside and outside walls of the second floor with hand tools. It should be noted that Baha Mohammed Elayan was killed by Israeli forces after he carried out an attack in an Israeli bus near al-Mukaber Mountain village on 13 October 2015.

As part of settler attacks, on 03 January 2016, some settlers made halls in the walls of a house belonging to Sab Laban family in Aqbet al-Khalediya neighbourhood, in the Old City in East Jerusalem. The family said that they were surprised when they got home and found halls in the children’s bedroom walls. These halls were made by settlers that seized a building belonging to al-Qaisi family adjacent to Sab Laban house the previous month. The settlement organizations attempt to seize the house claiming that they owned it since before 1948.

Restrictions on movement

Israel continued to impose a tight closure of the oPt, imposing severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.

The illegal closure of the Gaza Strip, which has been steadily tightened since June 2007 has had a disastrous impact on the humanitarian and economic situation in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli authorities impose measures to undermine the freedom of trade, including the basic needs for the Gaza Strip population and the agricultural and industrial products to be exported. For 9 consecutive years, Israel has tightened the land and naval closure to isolate the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, and other countries around the world. This resulted in grave violations of the economic, social and cultural rights and a deterioration of living conditions for 1.8 million people. The Israeli authorities have established Karm Abu Salem (Kerem Shaloum) as the sole crossing for imports and exports in order to exercise its control over the Gaza Strip’s economy. They also aim at imposing a complete ban on the Gaza Strip’s exports. The Israeli closure raised the rate of poverty to 38.8%, 21.1% of which suffer from extreme poverty. Moreover, the rate of unemployment increased up to 44%, which reflects the unprecedented economic deterioration in the Gaza Strip.

Settlement activities

On 31 December 2015, under the protection of Israeli forces, Israeli bulldozers levelled part of a plot of land belonging to Isma’il Abed Rabbu Shalalda in Sa’ir valley, northeast of Sa’ir village, east of Hebron, in order to establish a military observation post.

On 05 January 2016, Israeli forces confiscated a tractor that was around a house belonging to Adham Abu Maria, who was notified to halt construction works, east of Beit Ommer village, north of Hebron. Moreover, they handed notices over to Khaled Abu Maria and Ghassan Breigeeth for the removal of eight water tanks used in irrigation system.

Recommendations to the International Community:

PCHR emphasizes the international community’s position that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are still under Israeli occupation, in spite of Israeli military redeployment outside the Gaza Strip in 2005. PCHR further confirms that Israeli forces continued to impose collective punishment measures on the Gaza Strip, which have escalated since the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, in which Hamas won the majority of seats of the Palestinian Legislative Council. PCHR stresses that there is international recognition of Israel’s obligation to respect international human rights instruments and the international humanitarian law, especially the Hague Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land and the Geneva Conventions. Israel is bound to apply the international human rights law and the law of war sometime reciprocally and other times in parallel in a way that achieves the best protection for civilians and remedy for victims.

In light of continued arbitrary measures, land confiscation and settlement activities in the West Bank, and the latest 51-day offensive against civilians in the Gaza Strip, PCHR calls upon the international community, especially the United Nations, the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Convention and the European Union – in the context of their natural obligation to respect and enforce the international law – to cooperate and act according to the following recommendations:

1. PCHR calls upon the international community and the United Nations to use all available means to allow the Palestinian people to enjoy their right to self-determination, through the establishment of the Palestinian State, which was recognized by the UN General Assembly with a vast majority, using all international legal mechanisms, including sanctions to end the occupation of the State of Palestine;

2. PCHR calls upon the United Nations to provide international protection to Palestinians in the oPt, and to ensure the non-recurrence of aggression against the oPt, especially the Gaza Strip;

3. PCHR calls upon the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to compel Israel, as a High Contracting Party to the Conventions, to apply the Conventions in the oPt;

4. PCHR calls upon the Parties to international human rights instruments, especially the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to pressurize Israel to comply with their provisions in the oPt, and to compel it to incorporate the human rights situation in the oPt in its reports submitted to the concerned committees;

5. PCHR calls upon the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to fulfil their obligation to ensure the application of the Conventions, including extending the scope of their jurisdiction in order to prosecute suspected war criminals, regardless of the nationality of the perpetrator and the place of a crime, to pave the way for prosecuting suspected Israeli war criminals and end the longstanding impunity they have enjoyed; 6. PCHR calls on States that apply the principle of universal jurisdiction not to surrender to Israeli pressure to limit universal jurisdiction to perpetuate the impunity enjoyed by suspected Israeli war criminals;

7. PCHR calls upon the international community to act in order to stop all Israeli settlement expansion activities in the oPt through imposing sanctions on Israeli settlements and criminalizing trading with them;

8. PCHR calls upon the UN General Assembly to transfer the Goldstone Report to the UN Security Council in order to refer it to the International Criminal Court in accordance with Article 13(b) of the Rome Statute;

9. PCHR calls upon the United Nations to confirm that holding war criminals in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a precondition to achieve stability and peace in the regions, and that peace cannot be built on the expense of human rights;

10. PCHR calls upon the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council to explicitly declare that the Israeli closure policy in Gaza and the annexation wall in the West Bank are illegal, and accordingly refer the two issues to the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Israel to compel it to remove them;

11. PCHR calls upon the international community, in light of its failure to the stop the aggression on the Palestinian people, to at least fulfil its obligation to reconstruct the Gaza Strip after the series of hostilities launched by Israel which directly targeted the civilian infrastructure;

12. PCHR calls upon the United Nations and the European Union to express a clear position towards the annexation wall following the international recognition of the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders, as the annexation wall seizes large parts of the State of Palestine;

13. PCHR calls upon the European Union to activate Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which provides that both sides must respect human rights as a precondition for economic cooperation between the EU states and Israel, and the EU must not ignore Israeli violations and crimes against Palestinian civilians;

In her hometown of Nazareth, Budour Hassan rarely ventured outside of her house alone. Hassan, 26, was born blind, and she was nervous about attracting attention or losing her way.

But Hassan yearned to be more independent, so in 2008 she moved to Jerusalem to study law at Hebrew University.

“I wanted to be different and try something that no one in the family has tried before,” Hassan, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, said in a recent video interview with media nonprofit the Institute for Middle East Understanding. “I never imagined [Jerusalem] would change my life so tremendously.”

Despite Jerusalem’s narrow, cobbled alleys and often explosive political tensions, it was here that Hassan found the confidence to navigate the streets alone.

“While walking, there is something that overwhelms you in this city … the streets, the smell of things, the smell of stones,” she said.

She also discovered a new passion: storytelling.

Working as a blind journalist, Hassan knows more than most the ways that vulnerability and strength overlap.

As she travels around Jerusalem and the West Bank reporting stories and interviewing people, sometimes she gets lost or needs to ask for help. But, she notes, “even people with perfect sight get lost or nervous about going to a new place.”

“The only thing I feel I am missing is the ability to take photographs, but this means I put a lot of effort into writing about the details,” Hassan told the WorldPost. “It makes you a better listener. You focus more on details like how people’s voices change.”

“I hear many things that people who focus on looking might miss,” she says. “What you see as a disability is not necessarily a disability.”

“It’s not just Jerusalem, ‘the holy city’ — it’s much more than that. It’s mainly about its people,” Hassan said. Jerusalem is “much more complicated than you think it is, and it’s much more beautiful than you think it is,” she said.

In 2011, troubled by the lack of Palestinian voices in English-language media at the time, Hassan began writing for the pro-Palestinian blog Electronic Intifada. That same year, her eyesight deteriorated further, as doctors had warned, and she lost the the little remaining vision she still had.

But she was emboldened by her ability to explore Jerusalem.

“In Jerusalem I can walk anywhere, I can go anywhere I want,” she said. “If you can go around on your own independently in the Old City, and the more conservative neighborhoods in Jerusalem, then there’s no place that you can’t go to on your own.”

She has since covered protests and clashes around Jerusalem and the West Bank. Alongside her graduate studies in law, she writes regularly for Electronic Intifada and her own blog, Random Shelling, as well as other English-language sites like Middle East Eye and TeleSur English, and Arabic news sites like the Jordan-based 7iber, and Syria’s al-Jumhuriya. She uses a Braille display connected to a laptop to read and type her stories.

“People are surprised to see that a blind person is a writer, but then you change people’s perception,” she told The WorldPost. She has even surprised herself. “Six years ago there is no way I would have imagined I would go to the places I’m going to now — far and remote places.”

Hassan describes herself as an activist and journalist, and says she is not neutral in any way. “I am Palestinian and I am part of the struggle,” she says. “The mainstream media treats us as numbers, without names, stories or tears.”

Hassan says she tries to show Palestinians and Syrians imprisoned or killed in the conflicts in all their complexity. “I don’t want people to think that people are just … symbols or heroes,” she said. “People have the right to be weak. People have the right to share their vulnerabilities … just as they have the right to share their power.”

CRH, one of Ireland’s largest building materials group has divested from Israel after ongoing pressure from Palestine solidarity activists. Since 2001, the company had 25 per cent of shares in the Israeli cement firm Mashav, owner of Israel’s top cement manufacturer Nesher, but in a recent BDS victory CRH have sold their shares with the Israeli company.

Nesher helped during the construction of Israel’s Wall in the West Bank, which was declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. In addition, Nesher cement has been used in constructing illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and in the light rail network connecting Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem.

Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign chair Martin O’Quigley described the move as ““an important victory for Palestinians whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by the unceasing construction of the Apartheid Wall, which steals Palestinian lands, divides communities, destroys the social fabric and makes normal life impossible.”

Orange and Veolia have also recently taken a step towards justice and divested from Israel. This marks a growing trend of support from the international community in pressuring multinational companies that are complicit in the occupation. O’ Quigley further highlighted that CRH’s divestment is one of many recent high profile victories for the BDS campaign. “‘Brand Israel’, it seems, is becoming increasingly toxic and it appears that international companies are eventually learning that it doesn’t pay to do business with the Apartheid state”, he added.

Shuafat refugee camp, occupied East Jerusalem – More than 1,000 Israeli troops entered Shuafat refugee camp in the occupied West Bank earlier this month to demolish the family home of Ibrahim al-Akkari, who was shot dead by Israeli forces after ramming his car into a group of people in Jerusalem last year, killing a soldier and a civilian and wounding 13 others.

The demolition would have left Akkari’s wife, Amira, and their five children homeless. But within a few hours, a message was being broadcast through local mosques and loudspeakers on cars, asking residents to donate what they could to help the family rebuild their lives.

Within a few days, activists said they had raised more than $70,000, with hundreds of people donating cash, furniture and household items.

“Each family donated what they could,” said Abdullah Alqam, a community leader who took charge of the campaign.

The Akkari family is now living in a newly built apartment block near the ruins of their old home. Their two-bedroom apartment, given to them free of charge by a local businessman, contains a brand new kitchen, furniture and appliances. Residents donated anything they could – down to the tiniest details, such as packs of sugar and spices – after all of the family’s possessions were blown up along with their home.

“The reaction of the people here didn’t surprise me,” said Amira, whose family first received the demolition order nearly a year ago. When it was finally carried out on December 2,more than a dozen Palestinians were subsequently injured in fierce clashes with Israeli forces.

“After my husband died, many people came forward to help. They gave us food and helped me pay for my children’s school fees,” Amira told Al Jazeera.

The policy of demolishing the homes of Palestinian attackers has been widely condemned by rights groups as collective punishment, which is prohibited under international law.

Although the Israeli government purports that the demolitions are meant to deter further attacks, rights groups say the line between deterrence and punishment is a thin one, asserting that the policy deliberately harms innocent people.

In early October, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, announced that the government would be taking “additional steps to deter terror and punish terrorists”, which included “fast-tracking the razing of terrorists’ homes”.

Since then, more than 100 people, half of them children, have been displaced, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. According to Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, 14 out of the 26 homes demolished or sealed since October belonged to neighbours of suspected attackers.

The practice, first introduced as an emergency military regulation during the British Mandate, was widely used during the second Intifada, when Israel demolished more than 600 homes, leaving 4,000 people homeless – the majority of whom had not been charged with any crime.

It was discontinued in 2005 after an Israeli military committee concluded that there was no evidence it worked as a deterrent, but it resumed again in 2014, shortly after the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teenagers.

“Not only do these demolitions contradict the Geneva Conventions, but also every common sense and morality,” said Dalia Kerstein, director of HaMoked, an Israeli NGO that has been petitioning the Supreme Court to stop the demolitions.

B’Tselem said the Supreme Court has failed to fulfil its role of preventing the state from acting unlawfully and has approved “almost every single case brought before it”. Jewish Israeli attackers have never been subject to the policy.

A spokesperson for the Israeli justice ministry did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

A day after the demolition in Shuafat, Israeli forces entered Nablus to demolish the home of Ragheb Alawi, suspected of masterminding an October shooting attack that killed an Israeli settler couple, Eitam and Naama Henkin. Alawi is currently in prison, awaiting judgment on his case. Three other homes were demolished in Nablus in October, while three more families have been served with demolition orders.

After the demolition of Alawi’s home, which housed his wife and two-year-old son, activists put a glass collection box in the centre of the city and formed a committee to oversee a fundraising campaign to rebuild the demolished homes. They have raised more than $200,000, activist Hassan Qamhia told Al Jazeera.

“In addition to that, some people donated land; others gave furniture, electronics and building materials,” Qamhia, a 33-year-old university administrator, told Al Jazeera. The fundraising campaign has not received any support from the government, he said. “Every day we count the money in [the presence of affected family members], while trusted community leaders oversee the process.”

While the municipality of Nablus will contribute towards rebuilding and renovating neighbouring homes that are damaged during home demolitions, it will not support the families who received the demolition orders.

“Together with the demolition order comes an order for the military to seize the land, with no time limit,” Kerstein said, noting that the orders target the premises, meaning the family cannot rebuild on the site.

“When we saw that nobody was doing anything to help these families, that government institutions weren’t doing anything, we decided something must be done,” Qamhia said. “We aim to give them keys to new apartments, with everything they need.”

Brazil’s reluctance to accept an Israeli ambassador who is a West Bank settler has led to a standoff with Israel now warning it could downgrade diplomatic relations.

The appointment four months ago of Dani Dayan, a former head of the Jewish settlement movement, did not go down well with Brazil’s left-leaning government, which has supported Palestinian statehood in recent years.

Most world powers deem the Jewish settlements illegal.

Israel’s previous ambassador, Reda Mansour, left Brasilia last week and the Israeli government said on Sunday Brazil risked degrading bilateral relations if Dayan were not allowed to succeed him.

“The State of Israel will leave the level of diplomatic relations with Brazil at the secondary level if the appointment of Dani Dayan is not confirmed,” Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely told Israel’s Channel 10 TV, saying Dayan would remain the sole nominee.

She said Israel would lobby Brasilia through the Brazilian Jewish community, confidants of President Dilma Rousseff and direct appeals from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Brazilian government officials declined to comment on whether Rousseff will accept the nomination of the Argentine-born Dayan. But one senior Foreign Ministry official told Reuters: “I do not see that happening.”

The official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak on the matter, said Israel would have to choose a different envoy because the choice of Dayan has further worsened relations that turned sour in 2010 when Brazil decided to recognise Palestinian statehood in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and settled.

Israel quit Gaza in 2005 but claims East Jerusalem as its indivisible capital and wants to keep swathes of West Bank settlements under any eventual peace deal with the Palestinians.

Tensions rose last year when an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman called Brazil a “diplomatic dwarf” after Brasilia recalled its ambassador from Israel to protest a military offensive in Gaza.

Brazil’s government was also angered by the announcement of Dayan’s appointment by Netanyahu in a Twitter message on 5 August before Brasilia had been informed, let alone agreed to the new envoy as is the diplomatic norm.

Over the weekend, Dayan went on the offensive to defend his nomination, telling Israeli media that Netanyahu’s government was not doing enough to press Brazil to accept him. Dayan said not doing so could create a precedent barring settlers from representing Israel abroad.

Emmanuel Nahshon, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said ties with Brazil were “good and important”, noting Israel’s recent opening of a new consulate in Brazil and the business opportunities for Israeli security firms during the Olympic Games to be held in Rio de Janeiro in August.

Israel has a considerable role in providing avionics technology for Brazil’s aerospace and defense industry.

Celso Amorim, a former Brazilian foreign and defence minister, said on Friday that the diplomatic dispute over Dayan’s appointment showed that “it is time the Brazilian armed forces reduced their dependence on Israel.”

The secretary general of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) called on Tuesday for Muslims all over the world to designate next Friday as a day of solidarity with Al-Aqsa Mosque, Anadolu has reported. Dr Ali Al-Qaradaghi said that Muslim scholars should use the day to explain how the Israeli occupation authorities are violating the Noble Sanctuary, including their plans to destroy the mosque and build the “Temple of Solomon”.

In addition, Al-Qaradaghi called on Muslims to sponsor the Palestinians who stay within the sanctuary in order to protect Al-Aqsa Mosque and undermine the Israeli plans. At least 12,000 need sponsorship of around $600 a month. This would, he explained, allow them to spend as much time as possible inside the mosque and thwart Israel’s “Judaisation” of the sanctuary.

The mass media should be utilised to shed light on the Palestinian issue, added the IUMS official, as he called on writers and intellectuals to interact positively with the issue of Al-Aqsa Mosque at all levels.

Extremist Jewish settlers and Israeli ministers enter Al-Aqsa Mosque forcibly almost every day, escorted by the police and army. They perform Talmudic rituals and attempt to impose a de facto partitioning of the mosque.

During the Israeli bombardment and shelling of the Gaza Strip last summer, an Israeli soldier approached a 74-year-old Palestinian woman Ghalya Abu-Rida to give her a sip of water. He gave her the water, took a photo with her and then he shot her in the head from a distance of one metre. He then watched as she bled to death, the Palestine Information Centre reported.

This is how Ahmad Qdeh, a journalist in Al-Aqsa TV, described the scene that he witnessed during the latest Israeli aggression. The spokesman of the Israeli army, Avichay Adraee, shared the photo of an Israeli soldier holding the water bottle and helping the old woman drink as an example of the “humanity” of the Israeli army towards the civilians in the Gaza Strip.

The field executions were among the stories Qdeh reported during the Israeli aggression on Gaza Strip. He said: “Ghalya Ahmad Abu-Rida lived in the Khuza’a area in the east of Khan Younis city. I live in that area too and I made a television report on her story after the Israeli soldiers executed her during the aggression.”

“During the aggression, an Israeli soldier approached the old woman and took a photo for another soldier while giving her water. They then executed her by shooting her in the head from a distance of one metre and let her bleed until she died,” he added.

Ghalya was born in 1941. She lived by herself in a room near her brothers’ house in the Abu-Rida neighbourhood of Khuza’a. She had no children. Her neighbourhood was one of the first places invaded by the Israeli army during the aggression.

Field Execution

Majed Abu-Rida, Ghalya’s nephew, confirmed to the media that his aunt was visually impaired and could hardly see. He said that the Israeli army had falsely claimed humanity while executing his aunt in cold blood.

Ghalya, with her weak body and white hair, refused to leave her house after the Israeli army ordered the residents of Khuza’a to evacuate. She thought her old age would protect her from being a target so she stayed in her home and refused to join the majority of the residents who left the area as the invasion began.

On 3 August, the Israeli forces announced a truce and allowed medical staff to reach the Khuza’a area. Ghalya was found dead after she bled to death as she was shot in the head near her house, Al-Aqsa TV confirmed to MEMO. Her brother confirmed that the photo shared by the Israeli army supported the family’s belief that Ghalya was in the hands of the Israeli army. The family also believed that the area in which Ghalya appeared in the photo and in which she was found asserted that the Israeli forces killed her after taking the photo for the media.

Misinformation

Professor of media at the universities of Gaza, Ahmad Al-Farra, said: “The photo the Israeli army spokesman shared is misleading propaganda by the Israeli army to present a humane portrait of its soldiers. It can enhance the opportunity to pursue the Israeli army’s soldiers as war criminals before the International Criminal Court.”

“This photo proves the confusion of the Israeli army spokesman in defending his army. It proves that they killed civilians,” he added.

He continued: “The Israeli occupation lies and misinforms in an attempt to affect international public opinion. It exploits the Arab media and Palestinian diplomacy in exposing the Israeli occupation’s crimes.” He demanded launching a large campaign to expose the Israeli lies and falsifications.

Al-Farra stressed the need for a media enlightenment campaign to go side by side with the field battles to correct the false image that Israel presents about its army and the resistance.

Israel carried out a 51-day war that claimed the lives of around 2,200 Palestinians and wounded around 11,000 others.